How to find historic U.S. War Department General Orders

Question

I'm working on a project having to do with the naming of the Endicott era coastal artillery batteries at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. The namesakes for these batteries were given in numbered general orders from the War Department. Is there a way to look up GO's by year and number.

I · Answer

The General Orders of the War Department for 1903 were published as a single volume which is available online through Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=4KFPAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s General Order 78 renames the fort from Fort Getty to Fort Moultrie General Order 79 sets for the names of the batteries. https://books.google.com/books?id=4KFPAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA32-PA25#v=twopage&q=Moultrie&f=false Bibliographic information

Title 
 General Orders and Circulars

Author 
 United States. Army. Division of Cuba

Contributor 
 United States. Adjutant-General's Office

Publisher 
 Adjutant General's Office, 1903

Original from 
 Princeton University

Digitized 
 Jul 13, 2010

You may also find the following response to a similar request to be helpful: RE: Seeking US Army GO's 37, 46, & 146 from 1904

Donald Hall · Answer

All Army General Orders issued since 1946 are available digitally here: 
 Army Publishing Directorate &ndash; Army General Orders (Active) 
 They are sorted by year. 
 Of course, for Coastal Artillery Batteries, that probably won't help much. 
 You might try searching the archives of the Army Heritage and Education Center here: 
 Welcome - USAHEC 
 They've digitized much of their collection, but not all. But I'll warn you, they went with the lowest bidder on their digitization project, and it's widely acknowledged that their indexing and searching function is horrible. So you might want to try using multiple different approaches to your searches. And make sure you save something once you've found it--you may never stumble on it again. 
 Finally, you may try contacting the Air Defense Museum at Fort Sill. The museum itself is closed, but I notice they have a phone number listed, as well as social media. They inherited the lineage and honors of the Coastal Artillery units (for the most part), so they may be able to help you, or point you to somebody who has digitized them. 
 U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Museum| Fort Sill | Oklahoma | Fires Center of Excellence

How to find historic U.S. War Department General Orders

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